- Science
- Curiously Krulwich
Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head: A Mosquito’s Lament
This, in case you were wondering, is a mosquito.
This is a raindrop.
And here’s a puzzle. Raindrops aren’t mosquito friendly. If you’re a mosquito darting about on a rainy day, those drops zinging down at you can be, first of all, as big as you are, and, more dangerously, they’re denser. Water is heavy, so a single raindrop might have 50 times your mass, which means that if one hits you smack where it hurts (between your wings) …
… you should flatten like a pancake. A study says a mosquito being hit by a raindrop is roughly the equivalent of a human being whacked by a school bus, the typical bus being about 50 times the mass of a